Is incivility at work confined to middle managers? Are they unpleasant because they like it — or because they can’t cope?

AS A junior solicitor in the 1990s, Douglas O’Neill came across his fair share of strong personalities. But one boss in particular taught him a lot about management.

“I knew quite soon in our relationship that we weren’t going to work together for very long because, while I respected his legal capability, I didn’t respect him. This was because of his approach to managing me,” said O’Neill, managing director of Inntel, a venue-booking company.

O’Neill’s boss may have assumed — as many people of his status did in the past — that he needed to be hard-nosed to get ahead. But new research from academics at Georgetown University in Washington and Grenoble Ecole de Management in France has found that this approach is out of date.

The paper, Organisational Dynamics, based on research carried out among 20,000 employees worldwide, found that people who are perceived as polite are twice as likely to